Oh, no! I didn’t get back in time from the Napoleonic Wars (delicious baguettes, believe it or not) to be the first to comment on this week’s Tom the Dancing Bug! Drat the luck! If only I had a way to get another chance to post this comment Like some way to travel through time. Wait a minute, a solution is coming to me! I’ll give it a try; wish me luck! -Percival Dunwoody, Idiot Time Traveler From 1909

kinda like a cloud i was up way up in the sky and i was feeling some feelings you wouldn’t believe sometimes i don’t believe them myself and i decided i was never coming down
just then a tiny little dot caught my eye it was just about too small to see
but i watched it way too long and that dot was pulling me down

i was up above it
i was up above it
now i’m down in it
i was up above it
i was up above it
now i’m down in it

well shut up so what what does it matter now
i was swimming in the haze now i crawl on the ground
and everything i never liked about you is kind of seeping into me
try to laugh about it now but isn’t it funny how everything works out (“i guess the jokes on me” she said)

i was up above it
i was up above it
now i’m down in it
i was up above it
i was up above it
now i’m down in it

i used to be so big and strong
i used to know my right from wrong
i used to never be afraid
i used to be somebody

i used to have something inside
now just this hole that’s open wide
i used to want it all
i used to be somebody

i’ll cross my heart and hope to die but the needle’s already in my eye
and all the world’s weight is on my back and i don’t even know why
and what i used to think was me is just a fading memory
i looked him right in the eye and said “goodbye”

i was up above it
i was up above it
now i’m down in it
i was up above it
i was up above it
now i’m down in it

I think that would be handed off to Touchstone Pictures…which is technically still the House of Mouse, but having Coyote Ugly, The Rock and Veronica Guerin brought to you by Walt Disney Pictures kind of breaks the illusion.

I realize that in all the long years I’ve been reading TtDB (1 or 2 at least), I’ve yet to see a bug named Tom dance. Could he have gone the way of Barney Google, Steve Roper, and the titular legumes in Schulz’s strip?

The populace celebrates as acts of bloody vengeance are extolled. No trial… just “raw justice” with bullets to the head in a darkened room. The American pedestal continues to crumble.

America, 1945…

” … The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason. … ”

For another, we had engaged the Nazi enemy in the manner of their choosing–the same thing the Seals were doing that day in Abbottabad.

This idea that somehow Americans of today are inferior morally or intellectually to those of the past is basically ubiquitous, this whole greatest generation crap, but my feeling is that despite inevitable setbacks the moral and intellectual progress of this country is more or less continuously forward.

If you doubt this, think of the state of the average Southern black man while your vaunted Nuremberg trials were occurring.

For another, we had engaged the Nazi enemy in the manner of their choosing–the same thing the Seals were doing that day in Abbottabad.

Actually, they were shooting people in the face with automatic weapons, and shooting women in the legs. These things aren’t generally called ‘extrajudicial’ because it’s a pretty word. We have a legal system available to use. We chose not to use it. That’s our failing, and ours alone.